The present disclosure relates to round robin priority selectors, and more specifically, to a priority selector that includes multiple priority selectors operatively connected in parallel, where each of the priority selectors simultaneously identifies an individual group priority bit within each group of bits.
Round robin priority selectors are used for many different applications to arbitrate among different requests for a limited resource. For example, round robin priority selectors are often used in a multi-port switch, a disk controller arbitrating requests, dispatch schedulers in a multithreading processor, or any other situation where competing resources are accessed using a round-robin type of methodology.
For example, because there are multiple threads in a multithreading processor, a round robin priority selector is needed as a dispatch scheduler to schedule requests competing for limited resources. Similarly, a disk controller can use a priority selector to arbitrate upon competing demands as requests are buffered. Switches can use a priority selector to arbitrate among transmission requests. In a multi-port switch, each of the ports of the switch receives transactions from the device coupled to the port, and the switch routes the transactions from the source port to a destination port.